How Vedas and Upanishads explain meditation?

Dhyana or Meditation in Vedas and Upanishads is essentially described as contemplation and meditation. In Yoga Sutras of Patanjali meditation is taken into account because the seventh step that results in Samadhi, which is that the eighth and final step of Ashtanga Yoga that results in Self Realisation.

Yoga and meditation really originated about 15000 years back when Lord Shiva, the Adiyogi (the first yogi), taught yoga to the seven sages popularly referred to as Saptha rishis, who became the disciples of Lord Shiva later, as mentioned in his classical book, Adiyogi, by Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev of Isha Foundation, India. meaning it's pre-Vedic in origin. Since then meditation has been practiced and taught by Saptharishis to people around the world.

                                                           Adiyogi at Isha Foundation, India

In the word Dhyana (meditation) the basis of the word is Dhi, which in Vedas refers to "imaginative vision" and is related to Goddess Saraswati with the powers of data, wisdom, and poetic eloquence. This word developed into the variant dhya- and dhyana, or "meditation". Nididhyasana may be a related term, mentioned in Upanishadic statements, maybe a composite of three terms, namely dhyai, Upasana ("dwelling upon"), and Bhavana ("cultivating").

In Hinduism, the term Dhyana (meditation) first appears within the Upanishads. The techniques of concentration or meditation are a Vedic tradition because these are found within the early Upanishads as dhyana or abhidhyana.

The concept of Dhyana started within the Sramanic movement of ancient India, which is really before the 6th Century BCE, that's somewhere before Buddha and Mahavira, where people started practicing Dhyana as means for self-awareness. In Hinduism, the practice of meditation was very profound and influential.

In the path of Hinduism meditation is employed to understand the Self, one’s relationship with other living beings, and therefore the Ultimate Reality. Other religions like Buddhism and Jainism also follow the practice of meditation in similar or variations of an equivalent, albeit the meanings are slightly different.

In both Aranyaka and Brahmana of Vedas, the practice of Dhyana or meditation is well described. While Upanishads considered meditation as contemplation, meditation may be a part of the self-knowledge process.

In Buddhism, Dhyana is that the training of the mind widely translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automated responses to sense-impressions, and resulting in a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness (upekkhā-sati-parisuddhi)." Meditation has been the core practice of Buddhism with several other related practices together resulting in mindfulness and detachment and totally related with the practice of dhyana.

Hymn 4.36.2 of the Rigveda and verse 10.11.1 of the TaittiriyaAranyaka, the word Dhyanam has noted alright and Kaushitaki Upanishad describes the character of mind and meditation in verses 3.2 to 3.6. Verse 3.2. proclaims “With mind, meditate on me as being prana.”

According to Vedas, one must meditate daily twice, a minimum of 20 minutes whenever, by sitting down anywhere comfortable with closed eyes. One must relax by breathing deeply a couple of times and repeat a mantra like OM or OM Nama Shivaya or the other short mantra by chanting in your mind silently.

 As a neighborhood of “interiorization”, the meditation within the Vedic era replaced the social external yajna fire rituals (Agnihotra) with meditative internalized rituals (prana-agnihotra). The Brahma sutras which is one among the three foundational texts of the Vedanta school of Hinduism states that meditation isn't one for every Veda, but belongs to all or any Vedic schools.

Vedic meditation may be a system of isometric exercises during which the effect of the change of tone of muscles on thinking and actions is studied. The findings are recorded allegorically as hymns, which were later compiled into Rig Veda.

 

Central to Vedic meditation is Purusha. The tone of all the muscles is often synchronized, equalized, and unified. The unified muscle in Rig Veda is understood as Purusha. Next in importance to Purusha is Agni and therefore the first Sukta of Rig Veda is about Agni. Agni symbolizes a force, which is controllable, small in magnitude, and short in duration. This force is ideally fitted to practicing Vedic meditation. The most important Sukta of Rig Veda is PurushaSukta, which is really about the practice of Vedic meditation.

 

Apart from the first Upanishads composed before 5th-century BCE, the term Dhyana and therefore the related terms like Dhyai (Sanskrit: deeply meditate) appears in numerous Upanishads composed after the 5th-century BCE, like chapter 1 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad, chapters 2 and three of Mundaka Upanishad, chapter 3 of Aitareya Upanishad, chapter 11 of Mahanarayana Upanishad, and in various verses of Kaivalya Upanishad, Chulika Upanishad, Brahma Upanishad, Brahmabindu Upanishad, Amritabindu Upanishad, Dhyana-Bindu Upanishad, Atharvasiras Upanishad, Kathasruti Upanishad, Maha Upanishad, Yogatattva Upanishad, VasudevaUpanishad, Hamsa Upanishad, Atmaprabodha Upanishad, etc.